


catalyst to your own happiness

by usoverlooked



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 11:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1302604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usoverlooked/pseuds/usoverlooked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott wakes up to his doorbell and opens the door to find Lydia Martin perched on a large suitcase.</p><p>“Allison called you about me staying here for a couple weeks, right?” She says, head cocked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	catalyst to your own happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecivilunrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecivilunrest/gifts).



> Happy birthday Dicey, you're one of my favorites and I'm so glad that a) we met via such amazing twitter rp circumstances and also b) that we've moved beyond that lmao.  
> Anyway, Dicey wanted Scydia for her birthday so I was beyond happy to oblige her.

**September**

Scott never checks his voicemail. It’s a fact that is number four on the of ‘dangerous things you need to stop doing’ list that Stiles posted on his fridge after Scott got an apartment. The rest of the list included minor things like ‘unhooking the fire alarm’ (#3)  to ‘diving in front of bullets for people like Isaac’ (#1), the latter of which included a side drawing of a sad face. Regardless, Scott often had about six or seven voicemails at any given point. They would wait there, unheard and waiting, until he got bored enough to delete them.

He deletes one from Allison on a Thursday. There’s a moment before he deletes it, finger hovering over the button to do so, where he considers listening to it. Allison – along with the rest of the pack, save Derek – had left Beacon Hills for college. Unlike Isaac and Scott himself – she hadn’t returned. They all stayed in contact, but Allison was fairly distant. So a voicemail from her was a little surprising.

It was not, however, as surprising as the next morning, when Scott wakes up to his doorbell and opens the door to find Lydia Martin perched on a large suitcase.

“Allison called you about me staying here for a couple weeks, right?” She says, head cocked. 

Lydia actually lets Scott carry her suitcases – the one she had been sitting on, and another one that she had behind it – into his apartment. She doesn’t explain anything as he sets it down, but informs him that she would only come for a good reason. Scott takes it in stride, offers to even take the couch for the duration of her stay.

“Allison said you have a spare bedroom,” Lydia says. She runs a hand over the bookshelf, pausing on a title or two. She has to stand on tiptoe to see the shelf she’s looking at and Scott’s a little charmed by that.

“Right, but it doesn’t have a bed. It’s basically an office, I guess,” Scott explains with a shrug. Lydia looks nearly guilty for a second before shrugging and thanking him. She pulls a book off the shelf and Scott watches as she flips open the front cover, her expression unreadable. He clears his throat. “I have to go to work. You can stay here, but I won’t be back until late, Deaton has me closing the clinic today.”

“Does Deaton still have that storeroom of books he had in high school?” Lydia asks. Scott nods and she smiles, flounces over to him. “I’ll join you then.” 

Scott puts the last dog in the kennel for the night and wanders back to the storeroom. Lydia’s curled up on the threadbare armchair, a stack of books on the end table next to it. He smiles at her, though her attention is completely focused on the book in her lap. He taps on the door and she looks up.

“I’m going to lock up, you can take a couple of those with you if you want,” Scott says. Lydia sticks the book in her hand under her arm as she stands. Scott fiddles with his keys as she gathers her purse and coat. “So, you weren’t bored?”

“Before this, I was working on a thesis statement involving molecular regeneration. This is actually almost fun,” Lydia replies, holding the book spine out. The title is in what looks like Gaelic, but Scott’s never been very good at telling the languages apart. He shrugs and Lydia smiles in response. “Do you usually get take out?”

“Actually, I can cook,” Scott answers. Lydia makes a face at that, surely remembering the chicken nugget fiasco of their senior year. Scott shrugs again. “I mean, it’s usually just pastas or stir-fry or something, but Stiles basically put me through boot camp when I told him I was moving into my own apartment.”

“You’ll have to teach me. I should contribute something while I’m here,” Lydia comments. There’s something kind in it that surprises Scott. It’s not that Lydia wasn’t kind before, except, well she really wasn’t. She was brave and smart and selfless, at times, but never just kind. It makes him smile until he catches her expression. It looks almost dejected.

“Lydia, I’m fine with you being here. You aren’t a burden or anything,” Scott says. Lydia nods, but her expression stays the same. Scott touches her arm, calming.

“Thanks,” she answers, voice quiet. She smiles up at him as they leave the clinic.

Scott tells the rest of the pack that Lydia will be staying with him for a few weeks and everyone seems rather surprised. Whether about her returning to Beacon Hills or staying with Scott, he’s not sure.

 

**October**

“Goblins,” Isaac says. Lydia snorts a laugh and doesn’t even bother to look up from her book for that one. Isaac shrugs as best he can from his sprawling position across the couch in Scott’s living room.

“Another pack,” Scott suggests. He taps one of Isaac’s feet until he moves it before sitting on the couch. Lydia makes a face and actually looks up, offended. Isaac chuckles and  leisurely drops his feet back onto Scott. Scott ignores Isaac and grins at Lydia. “Right, obviously the purpose of you coming back is much larger.”

“Stiles thinks it’s because he’s dating Cora and you’ve returned to win his heart, despite his being in Nevada,” Derek puts in from his spot in the corner of the room. Lydia pulls a face at that and Derek raises his eyebrows. “Messenger, do not shoot.”

“I think she just missed us,” Isaac puts in with a touch of finality. Scott and Derek mumble their agreement and Lydia shrugs, letting the answer settle.

It’s been nearly two weeks since Lydia showed up and things have fallen into an odd semblance of a pattern. Lydia spends most of her time researching something, but she won’t tell anyone exactly what it is – Scott, for the most part, isn’t concerned. Lydia assured him early on that she’d tell him if anyone was in danger and he trusts her on that. The rest of the pack – the ones in town, Derek and Isaac – stop by often. On weekends, they come by Scott’s apartment sometimes for dinner but usually just to shoot the shit. Scott works as normal, sleeps on a bed the Sheriff brought over for him, and cooks. It’s all fairly normal, except for the fact that Lydia is being incredibly tight-lipped about pretty much everything.

Derek and Isaac leave after a while. Isaac works as a waiter at a diner on the outskirts of town and, as usual, has the morning shift. Derek tries to claim that his dog needs his attention. The dog is a huge mutt that Cora named Stella before Derek could name her and she is admittedly attention-needy. Scott suspects that Derek gets antsy about being around just him and Lydia for some reason, but never brings it up.

“Are you ever going to tell us?” Scott asks as he leans back on the couch. Lydia shakes her head, a ghost of a smile on her lips, and Scott laughs out a sigh. “Alright, are you ever going to tell me? I am your alpha.”

“Wow,” Lydia looks up at the clock. “It took almost two weeks for you to pay the alpha card. I’m impressed. Isaac said you used it on him the other day to get him to bring cupcakes to you at work.”

“I let him have some,” Scott says, indignant.

“Why did you come back to Beacon Hills?” Lydia asks. Scott looks at her, her book now in her lap and her hair piled in a bun atop her head that looks dangerously close to falling out.

“I belong here,” Scott says simply. There’s more, but he hasn’t ever articulated it. Lydia nods and suddenly he can’t help it. “You remember Malia?”

“From our brief encounter where she tried to kill me for killing her dad or from the time I tried to tutor her in English?” Lydia quips. Scott winces at it.

“I should’ve been back here when she started to…to change. If I had been here, I could have explained why we took out Peter,” Scott says, words slow. Lydia walks over, sits on the couch next to him. She touches his arm and Scott nods. “I don’t really mention it because people say it isn’t my fault, but it still feels like it was.”

“You handled her once you found out. Now she’s happily pack with those people in Seattle,” Lydia says. Scott smiles, appreciates that she doesn’t try to tell him it’s not his fault. It’s an argument he doesn’t feel like making.

“Did you know that in New York, almost 150 people die every day?” Lydia says, almost conversationally. She crosses her legs at the knee and fiddles with the hem of her skirt before continuing. “It’s not as bad as it was in high school - hearing them - but it would still happen. Not every time, but often enough.”

“That’s...” Scott cuts himself off, knows her well enough to stop the sympathy in its tracks. “I’m glad you’re back, despite all that.”

Lydia smiles before standing to walk back to the bedroom. She pauses, raps her knuckles against the wall. Scott cranes his neck to see her and finds her studying him.

“It wasn’t the hearing them, it was not being able to help them,” Lydia says and there’s some note of ‘your fault’ directed at him that remains unsaid. Scott ducks his head back down and nearly misses it. But he just catches it, the whisper of thanks that slips from her.

Scott smiles at it.

 

**November**

“I can’t believe you’re this bad of a cook,” Scott says around a smile. Lydia makes a face from the barstool Scott sequestered her to. He shakes his head. “You can speak, like, every language in the world, but you can’t cook.”

“I can order take-out in enough languages, I don’t need to cook,” Lydia says, finishing with an indignant sniff. Scott still smirks and she huffs. “It’s just an unnecessary skill for me.”

“Tell that to my kitchen,” Scott teases and Lydia makes an affronted noise. He smiles. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nice to see the infallible Lydia Martin not know something.”

Lydia rolls her eyes at it. Scott turns back to the kitchen, drops the charred remains of Lydia’s attempt at a chicken Kiev in the trash and picks up the phone. Lydia reaches for it and he tosses it to her. She order them Chinese.

Scott offers to pick it up, to save a delivery fee. Lydia shrugs, offers to go with him and he’s not surprised. She’s been here two months now and at some point he realized she likes having company for most things. He wonders – never asks, never dares – if there’s a reason for it, but part of him thinks it might just be part of who she is. In college she had been the captain of a sorority, in high school the queen bee, and now she was, well, a researcher. It was odd, he realizes as she fiddles with the radio station as usual, for her to not be in charge of things.

“Is it weird, not being in charge of anything right now?” Scott asks, because subtlety is a skill he never has fully possessed. Lydia considers this, forehead crinkling at the question.

“I’m the head of the research department for the pack,” she says finally. She shrugs a shoulder and Scott is both touched and amused that she considers that her job, not the works he’s doing as a paralegal for a local law firm. Scott smiles at that until he feels her eyes on him as she turns in her seat. “Why didn’t you marry Kira?”

Scott makes a surprised noise at that and anyone else would stammer out an apology. Lydia simply lets the question hang in the air. It’s a solid question, admittedly. Yet not even Stiles had asked. Well, Stiles had asked, once, and Scott had glared at him for two seconds before Isaac berated Stiles for being nosy.

“I mean, I don’t know. I guess you’d have to ask her,” Scott admits as they pull up to the Chinese take-out place. He turns to her before getting out to get the food and Lydia’s gaping at him. He shrugs and moves for the door, but Lydia grabs his arm. She removes her hand half a second later.

“I’m sorry,” she says, quiet. He waits for her to ask why he didn’t tell anyone that it was Kira broke it off, why he let everyone believe that he ended things. Instead she just pulls her wallet out of her purse and waves a twenty at him. “I’m buying, and don’t try to argue.”

He doesn’t bother arguing. He can’t keep from smiling as he gathers the bag of take-out containers from the desk. When he returns to the car, he looks at her for a beat too long and feels his heart sink. Something clicks into place and Scott swallows hard as Lydia steals the bag of take-out from him and arranges it on her lap. She gives him an odd look and he jumps, starts the car.

He drives and wonders how this is the first time he’s wanted to kiss Lydia Martin since he was sixteen.

 

**December**

“I’ll bet you’re terrible at gift-wrapping,” Lydia declares as she saunters into the living room. Scott keeps his head bowed over Isaac’s gift – a scarf and a boxset of a tv show that Isaac’s DVR is full of. Lydia drops onto the floor next to him and he realizes that she’s wearing one of his shirts. He shuts his eyes for a moment, prompting her to prod him with her foot.

“Belated thought, but do you think we have to get Derek something for his birthday and for Christmas?” She asks when he looks up. Scott tries to consider but part of his mind is caught on the ‘we’, the idea of them giving gifts together and something about the domesticity of it stalls him. Lydia huffs when he doesn’t answer. “We can just have him join us for a nice dinner next week and give him the present for his birthday.”

Scott nods and there’s that ‘we’ again. The thing is, since realizing about a month ago that his feelings towards Lydia aren’t entirely platonic, nothing’s happened. She still sleeps on his bed, he still sleeps on the bed that used to be the spare in the Stilinski’s house. She’s still in Beacon Hills – a fact that amuses Derek, of all people, to no end. Every time he sees her – which is often because Derek gets lonely around the holidays, a fact Scott noticed years ago – he smirks at Scott for a second. Scott looks over at Lydia and she’s measuring wrap paper for whatever she got Allison. When it arrived, she had laughed for about a minute before hiding it so Scott assumes it’s something he really doesn’t want to know about.

“You should hurry up and wrap that, Isaac’s going to be over soon and he still tells Allison everything,” Scott says and Lydia waves a hand at him. He chuckles and goes back to his own present, putting a bow on. When he looks back up – and he swears it’s only a minute later – Allison’s gift is wrapped and Lydia’s looking like the cat who got the canary.

“I win,” she chirps and sits back on her heels. Her smile is almost mean, how badly Scott wants to reach over and touch it. He clears his throat at the thought and jumps up. Lydia peers up at him. “Are you going to get my present?”

“I could be persuaded,” Scott says and Lydia quirks an eyebrow. He smirks because that used to be his trick and somehow she’s picked it up. “You have to be on door answering duty.”

“Just because Cora glares worse than Derek,” Lydia says teasingly, but it sounds enough like agreement that Scott heads down the hall.

He has to stretch up to reach the present he hid in his closet and when he backs out of it, he smiles. Lydia’s lingering in the doorway, one hip leaned against it. He holds the present out and she yanks it to herself, grinning wide. Scott’s sure his face matches hers. She tugs at the ribbon, pauses to look up at him. He nods and she tears the wrappings off.

Her grin freezes and Scott’s heart plummets. Stiles had suggested make-up or Rosetta Stone, but Scott had gone a different direction. Lydia pulls the note on the cover of the book off.

“’Lydia, this book is one that the internet experts said is one of the classics that still doesn’t have a very accurate translation. If anyone could figure one out, it’d be you’,” she reads aloud. She bites at her lip and looks up at him. He smiles, nervous, and her eyes mist up.

She’s crossed the few feet and hugging him before Scott can explain. He’s surprised because Lydia is not a hugger. He can count in single digits how many times she’s hugged him – included both high school and college graduations and a smattering of life-threatening events. Now, she burrows her head in his neck with something that sounds nearly like a sniffle. She pulls back and her mouth opens and shuts a few times. Then the doorbell rings and she blinks her eyes shut for a long second, squares her shoulders.

“Thanks, I’ll get the door,” she says quickly and practically sprints away. Scott blinks after her for a moment before following.

The pack filters in – Allison is first, with Isaac about a minute behind her, then Derek and finally Cora and Stiles, who are bickering as they walk in without knocking – and everything goes well. At some point in the past, they had picked up the tradition of spending Eves together – whether it be Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s or Valentine’s. Around midnight, everyone begins to leave, albeit slowly. It’s nearly one before Lydia and Scott are alone again. There was a few bottles of wine, but only Stiles, Allison and Lydia able to drink it, leaving Lydia rather tipsy. She leans against Scott on the couch, hums anxiously when he moves to get up. He sighs and falls back onto the couch as she curls against his chest. It constricts with the motion.

“We should go to bed,” Scott says. She grins, almost predatory and Scott blushes. “Not, I mean, it’s late.”

“I used to sleep out in the living room and watch the tree before Christmas. I don’t remember why I stopped,” she says as answer. Scott drops a hand onto the small of her back. She props her chin on his chest and squints up at him. “That book is the best present anyone’s ever given me, y’know.”

He smiles for a long time before they both fall asleep there. It’s entirely too comfortable and Scott spends most of Christmas trying not to think about how nice it was.

 

**January**

The last weekend in February is oddly warm and Scott walks to work in the morning. When he gets there, Isaac hands him a coffee. Isaac then reports that another werewolf came into the diner, sniffed him once and ran out apologizing. Scott is surprised by the news, but Deaton simply smiles. It’s mysterious enough that Scott pauses in trimming the toenails of the Yorkie he’s working on and fixes Deaton with a look. Deaton simply shakes his head.

“I would ask Miss Martin about that,” he says before ducking back into his office. Scott turns back to Isaac, who shrugs and launches into a tale about a burly motorcycle gang type who ordered whipped cream on his pancakes.

When Scott gets back to his – or their, it should be their because Lydia’s been there for nearly five months by now and paying rent for just as long – apartment, he finds Lydia flicking through channels. She greets him with a question but he barely hears it.

“Is you being here scaring off other packs somehow?” He asks and Lydia’s head swivels to him quickly. She swallows heavily, eyes wide with fear and Scott backtracks. “I’m not mad, Lyd, it was just something Deaton said.”

“Having an alpha female has shown to decrease territorial disputes in most cases and since Kira moved away, I just…” Lydia trails off, bites her lip. Scott’s crossed to the living room now and she looks up at him pleadingly. “I was just trying to keep everyone safe.”

“Oh,” Scott remarks. He can feel a blush working its way up the back of his neck. “So, are we, um, mates or-“

“No,” Lydia breathes out forcefully. It hurts a little and Scott’s face must show it. “That’s what I’ve been researching, I mean, if it had to be a male-female pairing and how close the proximity has to be. Unfortunately, most of it is based romantically and a lot of it seems to be case-specific.”

“You could’ve just told me,” Scott says. Lydia gives a small smile, raises a shoulder in a shrug.

“I didn’t want you to think I was trying to trick you into-,” she stops, swallows. Scott blinks at her, tries to puzzle it out, but before he can Lydia’s jumping up. “If you’re uncomfortable with it, I’m sure Derek or Isaac would be willing to move in with you and I-“

“I’m fine with it,” Scott interjects. Lydia breathes out, nods. He folds his hands in front of him before he does something stupid like grab her hand or kiss her or – anything really. Now seems hardly the time for it, but he has to quench the urge regardless. She mutters excuses and ducks back to her bedroom and he lets her go.

Scott paces for most of the rest of the night, trying to fight the warmth that comes with the thought of her being his, something of an alpha in her own right officially. He ends up going for a run and ends up at Derek’s. The question spills out before he can stop it – did Derek know why she was there?

“My mom used to always say that was why she kept my dad around,” Derek answers with a grin. Scott grimaces, wonders if Lydia knows that and thinks she’ll end up as that. He wouldn’t object to it, marrying to keep the pack safe, but it would be, well, not what he wants. Especially not if Lydia is uncomfortable with it.

Derek laughs at Scott’s muddled expression – and really, that should stop being surprising to Scott at some point, Derek Hale laughing, but it hasn’t yet. He pats Scott’s arm.

“She said it as a joke. My parents were happy together,” he explains. Scott smiles at that.

 

**February**

Lydia spends more time at the law library for the first few days of February before she mentions over dinner one evening that she’s going to take the bar exam in the summer. She says it in such an off-hand way and Scott just smiles at her for it.

“What?” She asks with a grin when she catches him. He nearly shakes his head, as he’s done in the past when she catches him.

This time, instead, he stands and walks around the table to her. Scott reaches for her, but as usual Lydia is just a little quicker than him. She kisses him like she’s been waiting for it to happen for a long time and as her chair falls behind her, he wonders if maybe she has been. Then she’s pulling back and smiling up at him.

“That,” he says, in answer to her question. She shakes her head as she grins and pulls him back to her.

 

**March**

They wait two weeks to tell the pack. No one’s surprised in the least.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr @masonjo


End file.
